Professor Paul Paton interviewing Paul Cadario

Ethics at the World Bank featured in McGeorge Ethics at Noon Series

What room exists for ethics alongside innovation in the new global environment? How do international organizations deal with ethical challenges? Paul Cadario, Distinguished Senior Fellow in Global Innovation at the University of Toronto, addressed these and other issues about the World Bank's role in international development as the featured speaker on Oct. 9, 2013 as part of the McGeorge Ethics Across the Professions Initiative Ethics at Noon series.

An interactive, hour-long interview of Cadario by Professor Paul Paton, Director of the Ethics Initiative, ranged across topics as diverse as the World Bank general counsel's approach to reconciling human rights with principles of non-interference in domestic affairs of states; responses to protests by Hollywood actor Richard Gere and other supporters of Tibet against World Bank funding of a dam project in China; the challenge of corruption inside and outside a vast international organization funding multi-million dollar development projects; the role of lawyers in the Bank's activities; and approaches to ensuring ethical conduct over a period of transformation and change during and after the Cold War.

Recently retired after 35 years of senior leadership positions at the World Bank, Cadario had responsibility across some of the Bank's most controversial policy, strategic and risk management issues, including oversight of the Bank's $40 billion trust fund portfolio and $7 billion in annual disbursements. For two decades he focused on the World Bank's frontline development programs in Western Africa and Asia, serving as Principal Country Officer in China and Mongolia. Cadario also led oversight of Bank activities in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and provided public sector management leadership throughout Asia.

At the University of Toronto, Cadario is cross-appointed in both the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the Munk School for Global Affairs. Professor Paton organized the event and facilitated the discussion. The Ethics at Noon series offers a personal discussion with professionals from various fields about ethics issues in context. The Ethics Across the Professions Initiative began in 2006 and is supported by the Sierra Health Foundation.

The next event in the Ethics at Noon series, "Tournament of Lawyers 2.0: A Conversation on the State of the Legal Profession" , will feature Professor Marc Galanter, co-author of Tournament of Lawyers, a leading 1991 study on the growth and transformation of large law firms. Professor Paton, Reporter to the American Bar Association's Ethics 20/20 Commission between 2010-2012 and author of its studies on Alternative Business Structures, will facilitate an interactive dialogue with Galanter on the future of the law firm in America on Thursday Jan. 16, 2014, at noon.